Super Tuesday—the single biggest day of 2016’s primary election marathon—is finally upon us. Tonight’s contests will settle 11 states (and one territory, American Samoa) on the Democratic side, and they’ll award nearly one-quarter of all the Democrats’ pledged delegates: 865 out of 4,051. Republicans will also fight it out in 11 states, though they don’t completely overlap with the Democrats’ battleground, and they’ll be divvying up 595 of their 2,369 total pledged delegates.
We’ve created the handy map above so you can keep track of the poll closing times and caucus starting times across the country. The first wave begins at 7 PM ET, with Georgia, Vermont, and Virginia. An hour later, at 8 PM ET, comes the big blast: Alabama, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas (with the exception of the El Paso area) all close, followed by Arkansas at 8:30 PM ET. And finally, there are the caucus states, where we can’t know when they’ll finish, but we do know when they start: 2 PM ET all the way out in American Samoa, 8 PM ET in Minnesota, 9 PM ET in Colorado, and last but not least, at midnight East Coast time in Alaska.
So what can we expect to happen? Below, we take an hour-by-hour, state-by-state look at each primary and caucus on both sides, and we dive into a number of different factors: polling averages, how each state hands out delegates (the rules vary widely), and some key highlights to look for as the returns roll in. And please join us back here at Daily Kos Elections starting at 7 PM ET for our liveblog of all the results.
7 PM ET
Georgia
Democratic delegates: 22 at-large, 13 pledged PLEOs, 5 in GA-01, 5 in GA-02, 4 in GA-03, 6 in GA-04, 7 in GA-05, 5 in GA-06, 4 in GA-07, 4 in GA-08, 4 in GA-09, 4 in GA-10, 4 in GA-11, 5 in GA-12, 6 in GA-13, 4 in GA-14 (102 total)
Democratic polls: Clinton 67, Sanders 28 (HuffPo Pollster aggregate)
Republican delegates: 31 at-large, 3 pledged RNC delegates, 3 in each CD (76 total)
Republican polls: Trump 37, Rubio 22, Cruz 19 (aggregate)
Georgia is the night’s second-biggest prize after Texas, and it’s looking like it’s pretty solidly in the Clinton and Trump columns, respectively. In particular, Georgia may turn out to be one of Hillary Clinton’s strongest states in the nation; similarly to South Carolina, more than half of the Democratic electorate is African-American. If you’re wondering which large counties to keep an eye on, on the Dem side, much of the state’s black population is concentrated in Fulton and DeKalb Counties (Atlanta and its eastern suburbs, respectively, and they closely align with GA-05 and GA-04, respectively). If the polls are accurate, Clinton could be on track to win around 70 of the state’s 102 delegates.
On the GOP side, there’s an important wrinkle to be aware of: Georgia has modified winner-take-all rules, so if Donald Trump gets 50 percent statewide, he gets all of the at-large delegates. If he gets less than 50, they’re awarded proportionately among candidates who hit the 20 percent threshold. So even if Trump is under 50, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz will still be fighting each other to squeak across the line at 20 to be able to gather any crumbs at all. Similarly, there’s a 50 percent rule in each CD. Someone who crosses the 50 mark in any CD gets all three of that CD’s delegates; if not, the winner gets two delegates and the runner-up gets one. So, in short, even if Trump gets only around half of Georgia’s votes, he’s still potentially on track to exploit the GOP rules to get three-quarters or more of the delegates.
Vermont
Democratic delegates: 3 at-large, 2 PLEOs, 11 VT-AL (16 total)
Democratic polls: two polls in Feb. were +65 Sanders and +76 Sanders
Republican delegates: 16 statewide
Republican polls: one poll in Feb. has 33 Trump, 15 Rubio, 14 Kasich
Needless to say, if there’s one state in the U.S. where Bernie Sanders is likely to win, it’s Vermont. Not only is it his most demographically suitable state (it’s both one of the whitest states and one with the highest percentage of liberal voters), but also it’s, of course, the state he already represents in the Senate. The only tension here, really, is whether Hillary Clinton can even hit the 15 percent viability threshold to get any delegates at all. If she squeaks over the line (and it may actually not happen—the two February polls here put her at 10 and 13 percent), then she might grab 2 of the state’s 11 congressional district-level delegates.
On the Republican side, the Vermont rules are somewhat like the Georgia rules. If Trump clears 50 percent, he gets the whole tofu-and-maple-syrup enchilada. Even if he doesn’t hit 50, any of his opponents would still have to clear 20 to get a proportionate share of the statewide total. Here, it’s Rubio and John Kasich boxing each other out to get over that line, but the result may be the same. With almost no evangelicals in Vermont, Cruz is a non-factor here.
Virginia
Democratic delegates: 21 at-large, 12 PLEOs, 5 in VA-01, 5 in VA-02, 8 in VA-03, 6 in VA-04, 5 in VA-05, 4 in VA-06, 5 in VA-07, 8 in VA-08, 3 in VA-09, 6 in VA-10, 7 in VA-11 (95 total)
Democratic polls: Clinton 56, Sanders 35 (aggregate)
Republican delegates: 49 statewide
Republican polls: Trump 39, Rubio 25, Cruz 16 (aggregate)
Virginia may turn out to be one of Sanders’ less-bad southern states … but it’s still pretty bad for him. Virginia has a somewhat smaller percentage of African Americans (around 20 percent statewide) than, say, Georgia or the Carolinas, so Clinton isn’t likely to put up numbers that rival those states. In addition, there are a lot of well-educated, liberal white voters in the suburbs of northern Virginia—though it's worth noting that Fairfax and Loudoun Counties are also some of the most affluent parts of the country, and one thing we saw in earlier states was Clinton doing well in the >$100k set.
Instead, Sanders might do better in the western parts of the state, especially the regions close to (and demographically similar to) West Virginia, where the few polls we’ve seen have shown him doing quite well. Potentially, he could win narrowly in the state’s most Appalachian-flavored CDs, VA-06 and VA-09 (though those have noticeably fewer delegates than the other CDs in the state, seeing as how they’re mostly voting Republican these days). VA-05, dominated by the college town of Charlottesville, is also worth watching. However well he does there, though, the CDs with the lion’s share of the delegates (like VA-03, an African-American-majority district centered in Richmond) are likely to go heavily for Clinton.
On the GOP side, things are remarkably simple: All delegates are allocated statewide, and there are no cutoff thresholds, so everybody, even Ben Carson, gets a trophy. Look for Trump to dominate, but keep in mind this is one state where Marco Rubio has to make a decent showing if he wants to continue to be viable, at least from his donors’ point of view. Northern Virginia is full of the archetypal middle-class suburban establishment voters who are supposed to be in his wheelhouse, the ones who allegedly just want a tax cut instead of calls for cleansing the soil.
8 PM ET
Alabama
Democratic delegates: 11 at-large, 7 PLEOs, 5 in AL-01, 5 in AL-02, 5 in AL-03, 4 in AL-04, 4 in AL-05, 3 in AL-06, 9 in AL-07 (53 total)
Democratic polls: 2 polls in February were Clinton +48 and Clinton +28
Republican delegates: 29 at-large, 3 in each CD (50 total)
Republican polls: Trump 45, Cruz 18, Rubio 17 (aggregate)
Alabama has nearly as large a percentage of African American residents as does South Carolina (26 percent in Alabama, 28 in South Carolina), and most of its old school conservative white Democrats have either left the party or the planet, so look for Alabama’s primary to put up similar numbers as we saw last week in SC. There’s no viability threshold in Alabama, so Sanders should eke out around a dozen delegates or so. But note how heavily the Democratic delegates are concentrated in AL-07, the state’s lone African-American majority district (which is primarily in Jefferson County, where Birmingham is). It’s likely we’ll see SC-06 style numbers in the 7th, with Clinton probably topping 80 percent.
Things may well be just as brutal on the Republican side, or maybe even more so: Alabama has an even nastier cutoff for winner-take-all than Georgia. Trump would get all of the statewide delegates if he goes over 50 percent … or if he’s the only candidate who gets more than 20 percent! Note that neither Cruz nor Rubio is north of the 20 mark right now. If Trump is below 50 and someone else is also over 20, only then does proportionate splitting occur. The same thing applies at the CD level: In each CD, Trump can win all three delegates simply by hitting 50 percent, or by being the only one over 20. If the polls are only slightly underestimating Trump, he can potentially scoop up all 50 delegates.
Massachusetts
Democratic delegates: 20 at-large, 12 PLEOs, 6 in MA-01, 6 in MA-02, 6 in MA-03, 6 in MA-04, 7 in MA-05, 7 in MA-06, 7 in MA-07, 7 in MA-08, 7 in MA-09 (91 total)
Democratic polls: Clinton 51, Sanders 42 (aggregate)
Republican delegates: 42 statewide
Republican polls: Trump 50, Rubio 20, Kasich 14, Cruz 10 (aggregate)
If you’d asked me a few weeks ago what state Sanders would be likeliest to win on Super Tuesday (after Vermont, of course) I'd have said Massachusetts. Not only is it next door to Vermont, but it also has a very liberal and very white Dem electorate that’s heavy on college students. (I sure as hell wouldn’t have said “Oklahoma,” which seems to have moved into that slot instead.) However, the polls have recently moved into a decided Clinton advantage, and maybe that’s not surprising, considering that she beat Barack Obama by a substantial margin here in 2008, even without much support from Boston's not-insignificant African-American population that year.
One often overlooked demographic tidbit is that in polls that have religious cross tabs, Sanders does very well with religious “nones,” while Clinton does much better with regular churchgoers. Some of that is secondarily related to race (black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics are both more likely to be religiously active and to support Clinton), but it's also a key difference between the white residents of Massachusetts vs. Vermont and New Hampshire: Vermont and New Hampshire are two of the nation's leading states, percentage-wise, for the non-religious, while Massachusetts (along with Rhode Island) is one of the nation's most Catholic states. Throw in the affluence of many of Boston’s suburbs (think back to how Clinton overperforms in households making over $100k), as well as the fact that Massachusetts has considerably more blacks and Hispanics than its northern neighbors, and that’s your explanation for why Clinton is winning here.
Massachusetts may see some unusual polarization, though; Clinton might clean up in heavily Catholic, more blue-collar CDs like MA-04 and MA-09, while Sanders is poised to dominate in western MA-01 and, to a lesser extent, MA-02. Massachusetts is unusual in that its rural areas are even more liberal than its cities, and Berkshire and Hampshire Counties form, essentially, Baja Vermont. Throw in the effect of the many college students in the Pioneer Valley, and you've got a stark dividing line down the middle of the state.
Turning to the GOP side, you might also be surprised to see Donald Trump with an even bigger lead (50 percent!?!) than in many of the southern states. Well, that’s because there are so few evangelicals here that Cruz doesn’t have any foothold. And, inaccurate WASPy caricatures about the state notwithstanding, most of the Bay State's GOPers are right up Trump’s alley: blue-collar, eager to complain loudly about things, and, well, pretty racist (for starters, think back to the culture wars of the 1970s—Boston was ground zero in the fight over busing). Massachusetts has only a 5 percent viability threshold for GOP delegates, so no one but Ben Carson will be going away empty-handed, but it looks like Trump will vacuum up the majority.
Oklahoma
Democratic delegates: 8 at-large, 5 PLEOs, 5 in OK-01, 5 in OK-02, 4 in OK-03, 5 in OK-04, 6 in OK-05 (38 total)
Democratic polls: Sanders 42, Clinton 41 (aggregate)
Republican delegates: 28 statewide, 3 in each CD (43 total)
Republican polls: Trump 34, Rubio 21, Cruz 20 (aggregate)
So, yes: Oklahoma, one of the reddest states in the country at the presidential level, and one where even the Democrats have traditionally been quite conservative, looks like Bernie Sanders’ best shot at a Super Tuesday win after Vermont, at least according to polling aggregates. (Maybe the state’s Democratic electorate has shrunk to the extent that it only includes the members of the Flaming Lips?)
The likeliest explanation for Sanders’ success here would be that unlike the other southern states, Oklahoma has a mostly-white Democratic electorate; the recent Monmouth poll that gave him a 5-point lead overall finds a Dem electorate that’s 75 percent white, 10 black, 5 Hispanic, and 10 ‘other’ (which in Oklahoma is mostly Native American). Once returns come in, you might keep an eye on Cleveland County to see if Sanders is running up the score there—that’s where the University of Oklahoma is, presumably a core of his local support.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump doesn’t have quite as gaudy a lead here as in other states: A large evangelical population is helping to keep Ted Cruz afloat. Oklahoma has a 50 percent winner-take-all trigger, but it isn’t looking like Trump will hit that, so instead statewide votes will be allocated proportionately to everyone who clears 15 percent (and it looks like both Rubio and Cruz will). At the CD level, it’s possible we’ll see them getting one delegate each in a lot of the CDs; if three candidates all clear 15 percent in a CD, each one gets one of the three delegates. (If Trump clears 50 in any CD, he’d get all of its delegates, and if two people clear 15 percent, then the winner gets two delegates and the second-place finisher gets one.)
Tennessee
Democratic delegates: 14 at-large, 9 PLEOs, 4 in TN-01, 4 in TN-02, 5 in TN-03, 4 in TN-04, 6 in TN-05, 4 in TN-06, 5 in TN-07, 5 in TN-08, 7 in TN-09 (67 total)
Democratic polls: 3 polls in February, ranging from Clinton +17 to Clinton +26
Republican delegates: 31 statewide, 3 in each CD (58 total)
Republican polls: Two polls in February; Trump 48, Rubio 18, Cruz 15, and Trump 40, Cruz 22, Rubio 19
Tennessee is another southern state with a somewhat lower percentage of African Americans in its Dem electorate. The portions of the state east of Nashville are almost entirely white (though, at this point in history, they're almost entirely Republican as well). As a result, Clinton’s leads aren’t as huge here as, say, Georgia, and it’s entirely possible that Sanders could keep things relatively close among the few Democrats in the Appalachian-flavored (and delegate-poor) TN-01 and TN-02 (also since TN-02 contains the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville). She's likely to run up the score in the black-majority TN-09, though (which is mostly in Memphis). Unlike most of the Democratic states, Tennessee has a viability threshold, though it’s only 15 percent, so Sanders isn’t likely to be shut out anywhere.
On the Republican side, there are winner-take-all triggers present that could set off a potential Trumpocalypse. Trump could scoop up all the statewide voters by either getting 67 of the vote, or by being the only candidate over 20 percent. Even if not, there’s a 20 percent threshold that Rubio and Cruz would have to meet in order to get any proportionate shares at all. At the CD level, again, Trump can win all three delegates in each CD by topping 67 percent or being the only one over 20. If two candidates top 20, the winner gets 2 delegates and the second-place person gets one. And if all three of them top 20 percent in a CD, they’d each get one delegate. So there’s a wide variety of possibilities here, and Cruz in particular has to fight to grab every crumb he can get (though considering this is one of the most heavily evangelical states in the country, if his best hope is to only scramble into a distant second, he's already lost the bigger war).
Texas
Democratic delegates: 48 at large, 29 PLEOs, between 2 and 10 delegates in each of the state’s 31 state Senatorial districts (222 total)
Democratic polls: Clinton 61, Sanders 33 (aggregate)
Republican delegates: 47 statewide, 3 in each of 36 CDs (155 total)
Republican polls: Cruz 36, Trump 30, Rubio 17
Texas is the biggest prize of the night on both sides. On the Democratic side, there are a whopping 222 delegates up for grabs (more than one-quarter of the night's total). Hillary Clinton seems poised to win a large majority of them, with an average lead of nearly 30 points in the polls. There’s a 15 percent viability threshold in Texas, at both the statewide and district level, but it’s unlikely Sanders will fall that low in any district. (Unusually, Texas Democrats use state Senate districts, not CDs. That may be because there are actually fewer state Senate districts (31) than there are congressional districts (36).) Sanders’ worst districts are likely to be the mostly-black districts (SD-13 in Houston and SD-23 in Dallas, each with 8 delegates); he’ll probably fare better in the mostly Latino districts (which have fewer delegates, because of lower turnout), and perhaps best of all in Austin’s SD-14, which also has the most delegates of any, at 10.
On the Republican side, this may well be the only state where we see a victory from someone other than Donald Trump. And that's only because Ted Cruz has ‘favorite son’ status (or, given his personality, ‘grudgingly-tolerated son’ status). Cruz has edged out Trump in most polls, so it’s not likely that either of them will hit the 50 percent mark statewide that triggers winner-take-all. It’s at least possible that Cruz might squeak past 50 in some of the most ultra-evangelical CDs (like TX-01 and TX-04), to take all three delegates, but even that seems unlikely.
However, the real number to watch on the GOP side may be whether Marco Rubio can squeak over the 20 percent threshold, in order to share at least some of the bounty. If he doesn’t (either statewide or in each CD), the proportional allocation will only be between Trump and Cruz. Texas is large enough that Rubio can't afford to leave empty-handed if he's going to have any hope of getting within contested-convention distance after the field gets further winnowed. If nothing else, Rubio has to hope to get over 20 in some of the most affluent, establishment-friendly suburban districts (like TX-03 in Collin County and TX-22 in Fort Bend County) so he can at least gather some crumbs.
8:30 PM ET
Arkansas
Democratic delegates: 7 at-large, 4 PLEOs, 5 in AR-01, 6 in AR-02, 4 in AR-03, 6 in AR-04 (32 total)
Democratic polls: Two polls in Feb., with Clinton up 57-32 and 57-25
Republican delegates: 28 statewide, 3 in each CD (40 total)
Republican polls: Two polls in Feb.— Trump 34, Cruz 27, Rubio 20, and Cruz 27, Trump 23, Rubio 23
On the one hand, Arkansas is one of the whitest southern states (only 15 percent African-American statewide), so you might expect it to function somewhat similarly to its neighbor to the west, Oklahoma. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton does have that whole “I was First Lady of Arkansas for 10 years” thing going for her. That latter factor seems to boost her numbers considerably, though it’s still not as dominant a performance as in states with a much bigger black population like Alabama and Georgia. Clinton will probably win handily throughout the state, though it's unlikely Sanders will have any trouble clearing the 15 percent threshold in order to grab between one-quarter and one-third of the state's delegates.
The GOP side, however, is pretty unclear. Previous generations of polls showed Mike Huckabee cleaning up here, and the few recent polls give mixed signals as to whether Trump or Cruz has the upper hand. On one hand, Arkansas is one of the most heavily evangelical states (point for Cruz), but on the other hand, it also has a notoriously poorly-educated white working class (point for Trump). Nobody seems likely to top 50 percent to trigger winner-take-all, and Arkansas has only a 15 percent viability threshold, so this looks like one state where Trump, Cruz, and Rubio may all walk away with similar-sized shares.
Caucuses
Minnesota
Democratic delegates: 17 at-large, 10 PLEOs, 5 in MN-01, 6 in MN-02, 7 in MN-03, 7 in MN-04, 9 in MN-05, 5 in MN-06, 5 in MN-07, 6 in MN-08 (77 total)
Democratic polls: One poll in January: Clinton up 59-25
Republican delegates: 14 statewide, 3 in each CD (38 total)
Republican polls: One poll in January: Rubio 23, Cruz 21, Trump 18, Carson 11
The night closes out with caucuses as we keep moving west. If the great successes from Iowa and Nevada are any indication, you may be waiting a looooong time for any reports, and that's assuming they manage to do it without accidentally burning down the high school gymnasium first. In Minnesota on the Dem side, delegates picked on March 1 filter their way up through “second level” conventions in April and "third level” conventions in May, culminating in the statewide convention in June. There's a 15 percent viability threshold, but neither candidate should have trouble meeting that.
On paper, Minnesota seems like it should have been one of Bernie Sanders’ best states. Its Democratic voters are very liberal and very white, and it has high levels of civic engagement and a reformist, good-government tradition. The one poll we've seen (from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune), though, doesn't show that at all—it finds Clinton winning by a southern state-sized margin. It’s more than a month old, but not that old (i.e. only a few weeks before Sanders winning New Hampshire). It could simply be off … but could it be that far off? Unfortunately, other pollsters have been loath to poll caucus states, so we're basically flying blind here. Much of the Dem vote is concentrated in the Twin Cities (Hennepin and Ramsey Counties; MN-04 and MN-05), so that’d be the main place to watch, though Duluth (St. Louis County— a place that’s elderly and Catholic, but also with a radical labor tradition) could be a wild card.
On the GOP side, they have an even simpler threshold: Only 10 percent. But we’re just as equally clueless about what'll happen here, as that Strib poll is equally hard to believe on the Republican side. Marco Rubio, winning here of all places? Trump certainly doesn't fall under anyone’s definition of "Minnesota nice,” and Cruz doesn't seem a good fit here either (though Minnesota’s GOP does contain a lot of evangelicals … think Michele Bachmann, for starters … but they don't tend to be the Baptists and Pentecostals you associate with Cruz’s movement), so mmmaybe it could in fact fall to Rubio, by process of elimination.
Colorado
Democratic delegates: 14 at-large, 9 PLEOs, 8 in CO-01, 7 in CO-02, 6 in CO-03, 5 in CO-04, 5 in CO-05, 6 in CO-06, 6 in CO-07 (66 total)
Democratic polls: One poll in February: Sanders up 49-44
Republican delegates: 3 in each CD (21 total)
In Colorado, we don’t even have the benefit of a clearly-loopy poll from an ostensibly neutral legacy media outlet. All we have is a garbage poll from a Republican internal pollster (Target Point) which was taken on behalf of a right-wing website, the Washington Free Beacon, an alternative for people who like Breitbart but don’t think it has enough sideboob in the right column. If you think that has any value, it does put Sanders up by 5.
And that's not entirely implausible, from a demographics perspective. Colorado has a similar profile as Nevada, but it’s somewhat whiter and less Hispanic (Colorado is 21 percent Hispanic, Nevada is 27 percent). Throw in the effect of some large college towns (something that Nevada lacks) like Boulder and Fort Collins, and you might well have a state that's a few points more Sanders-friendly than Nevada, which went somewhat narrowly for Clinton. (On the other hand, the Denver area has a lot of one Clinton-friendly category that Nevada doesn't have much of: Affluent suburbs.) Either way, it seems like Clinton and Sanders will be emerging from Colorado with about the same number of delegates each … though the Sanders camp may find it more important to simply notch another win besides Vermont, in order to make an argument in favor of going forward.
So what about the Republican side? For starters, we don’t even have an R-internal poll here; the best we can do is a Quinnipiac poll from November, amidst Ben Carson’s brief surge. And more importantly: Colorado's GOP caucus is nothing more than an advisory vote! Per the Green Papers, “There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucus to relate the presidential preference of the participants to the choice of the precinct's delegates.” That doesn't mean there's a primary happening later, though. All the actual decision making in Colorado happens at the district convention level, on April 8. So, essentially, anything that happens on the Republican side on Tuesday night is sound and fury that you can safely ignore.
Alaska
Republican delegates: 28 statewide
Republican polls: One poll from January: Trump 28, Cruz 24, Carson 9
Finally, the Last Frontier is having its Republican caucuses on Tuesday. (The Democratic side doesn’t happen until Mar. 26, for some reason.) Despite the weird terminology (they're actually called "district conventions," not caucuses), they do have more actual impact than the Colorado faux-caucuses, and there may actually be a raw vote total at the end of the night, because any candidate needs to hit a statewide threshold of 13 percent to get delegates.
The lone recent poll gives Trump a small edge, but shows a lot of undecideds. The state’s two main Republican factions (a pro-Big Oil, pro-pork establishment, and a weirdo, paranoid Paulist counter-establishment) don't really map well on to any of the remaining candidates, so it's very hard to say what happens here. In fact, by the time any results actually show up, the Beltway media will probably already be on to the next shiny object instead.